Thursday, 2 November 2017

Everything is inappropriate, but what is illegal?

What other conclusion can be drawn from the current maelstrom that passes for a 24 news cycle? Taking offence has reached a new, unexpectedly stratospheric level.

I am really baffled as to what the real agenda is, I can't be bothered with it all being a put-up job from the media etc, it is just a self-feeding mess. Perhaps it is just shits and giggles as the expense of the so-called powerful.

A really weird aspect too is that as the Country become more imprurient, the juniors in my office are of the Tinder generation who frequently disappear to total strangers houses for an hour or two on the strength of a squizz at a facebook profile, the media world has decided that it is Victorian values all the way (hmm, not sure women had the vote etc back then etc, but anyways...) at Westminster and more widely.

Worse of course, for those of you in work, will know the 100% verboten discussion of basically anything at work bar say football or fashion. God forbid, a politics or discussion about grand changes in the country or the world; let alone actual hanky panky! Any discussion is likely to cause offence to be taken by someone and result in a swift visit from the Diversity and Human Remains harradinati.

Perhaps, Westminster is now just undergoing the cultural revolution that has already overtaken our workplaces and being in the media spotlight, this will be an unpleasant experience for all involved.

For me though, the issue must be one of law. Where people act unlawfully they deserve their punishment, however flirting and adultery are not legal offences. However, tax avoidance is not an offence either but try telling that to the Guardianista on the Clapham Omnibus. So, law seems to have only a partial role to play in the court of public opinion.

More widely, the UK broadly invented the modern rule of law. The Monarchy submitting to Parliament and in turn they to the Judiciary. To abandon this will actually do great harm to our standing in the world - the UK is rightly renowned as a safe, ordered and light touch place to live ones life. To be abandoned to trial by twitter is a retrograde step and one that could damage our long-term business prospects. A legal underpinning is critical to all of our rights as subjects of Her Majesty, without it, the State towers over us all instead of serving us.

Finally too, for all the need to stop the abuse of power by sleazy men or women (good luck with this by the way Common Purpose, I suggest you may read some Thames Hobbes), surely no one of any character will be stupid enough to stand for Parliament in future. Many of our great leaders also had great personal moral failures, but we won't be getting any of them in the future. The future is middle-management straight as a die types. We will have to see how that works out in due course.

the juniors in my office are of the Tinder generation who frequently disappear to total strangers houses for an hour or two on the strength of a squizz at a facebook profile

At the turn of the millennium, when nobody had phones that doubled as digital cameras, and internet chat rooms where totally anonymous, all you had to go on was a (usually very flattering) self-description of each other.

As for the legalities, the bit that fascinates me is whether the US will apply their 'SVP' laws to rich and famous sex pests in the USA with the same rigor they are to Joe Sixpack.

I know in California (where most of the Hollywood sex pests operate) you qualify as a 'sexually violent predator' if you have convictions for sex crimes with two identifiable victims. And rape there includes "put out or I'll get you the sack" sort of behaviour.

I'm less sure what other states require before they commit you indefinitely to an SVP treatment program, but one of the big legal challenges was from a man convicted of two counts of flashing shop assistants. The legal challenges usually result in a list of demands for change in procedures, but never anyone's release.

Indefinite civil internment of sex offenders who have either already served their sentences (or have agreed to voluntary commitment as a kind of plea bargain to avoid a prison system where the screws turn a blind eye to the sort of beatings the result in you having nearly every bone in your body broken) was a very popular bandwagon for US politicians to jump on.

How delicious an irony would it be if one of them now finds themselves locked up indefinitely in a gulag on an SVP program they voted for? Where the only hope of release is to submit to 20+ years of treatments such as using a device to measure changes to the size of your manhood while making you watch porn, by people working from a textbook so prudish that it says anyone capable of having more than one orgasm a day has a mental illness?

It does feel like antics in Westminster dominate the news to the point where an MP patting a knee 15 years ago becomes a front page story while, say, GPs or police officers with stronger perversions are off the radar.

Also say what you like about Labour but they've got a ruthless Leninist discipline to them. All the media focus is on the Tories, despite allegations of rape and cover-up.

The agenda is just as it was with organised Pakistani rape gangs - point the finger everywhere else but at the perpetrators, attack straight white males.

"Children are being sexually exploited in every “town, village and hamlet” in England with social networking sites and easy access to pornography fuelling the problem, a watchdog has warned MPs. Sue Berelowitz, Deputy Children's Commissioner, said abuse was taking place in “leafy rural areas” as well as inner cities, and involved organised gangs as well as lone paedophiles using computers."

"Never underestimate the ability of our Parliamentarians to jump on a bandwagon and make it all about them..."

I'd add to that the liking British women seem to have for giving British men (usually white ones) a bloody good kicking. Whole newspaper pages are given over to white-man bashing. Whole TV programmes given over to white-man bashing.

This is mainly the sisterhood taking part in the Metoo thing.

Women abuse men in the workplace too. In a different way but they use their sex to do it.

@EK - *please* don't go down the paranoid path, it's not wimmin out to get White Man. Bill Cosby for starters.

Thing is, power does actually corrupt and, due to biological and historical quirks, the people in power are generally white men. As more women and minorities get into positions of power, they too will push their luck and abuse their position. And hopefully get hung out to dry over it too.

It's like thieves in China complaining the police are only after Chinese ethnic thieves - it's a bit of a self-fulfilling conspiracy theory.

My only issue is separating the truth from the bullshit. I don't like Courts of Public Opinion, it's the modern version of village gossip and scarlet lettering, and whilst I expect most victims to be genuine there'll be the usual chancers looking for a payout as well as the self-deluded and damaged.

It's unfortunate, but its unlikely most people will ever get redress, meanwhile careers are destroyed on what amounts to hearsay. That's not justice for anyone.

Short of the ultimately invasive police state, where even our thoughts and memories are collated and stored, we have to accept the limitations of justice, and in cases of sex crimes, abuse of position and the whole spectrum of he said/she said those limitations are stark.

Kudos to Julia Hartley-Brewer though, she didn't paint herself as a victim and made it clear that continuing to being a creepy twat would result in painful consequences. If I had a daughter I'd point her out and say there, there's a role model. Someone grabs your pussy, kick them in the balls until they sing like a castrato.

In my second ever job aged 18 (1998, a dodgy telesales outfit in deepest darkest Ashington) I was set upon by this horrid, married, morbidly obese woman in her mid 30's.

I gave her a lift home for £2.50, and she offered to pay me in other ways. I politely declined due to her being married. So she said I could have the £2.50 and the bj. Again I politely declined. Her next offer was if I let her she'd keep schtum, but if I didn't she'd tell everyone at work I had. She was utterly gross, so again I refused.

I didn't actually take her threat seriously, but sure enough I came to work the next evening and not only had she told everyone we had started an affair, she had actually managed to convince at least half of them of it. The boss took me aside to ask about it, and I think believed me, but mused over how she would have had to deal with the situation had it been a 35 year old man trying the same thing with an 18 year old girl.

Anonymous - Bill Cosby is the only one and he is on the conservative side of entertainment. Black men have made a whole genre (Rap music) out of misogyny (bitches 'n' hoes) yet this is revered as high art by white lefty luvvies.

I suppose the Rolling Stones have got away with it too but not so much.

Perhaps the target is white *conservative* males in this country... at a time when we are trying to deal with Brexit, the goverment in yet more turmoil over trivia.

What a fucking shambles. Have those in the bubble not seen the hard-bastard armies that the Russians and Chinese are amassing while we are pussifying ourselves ?

Stephen L - I wasn't referring to sexual abuse of males, more to the use of female sexuality.

Ever been in a place where a charismatic woman arrives and people (including females) are fawning around her ? She then uses her wiley ways to cut people out of the social circle ? Or those that play the card and get male workers to cover their shifts ?

It's a form of physical abuse - especially an unexptected extra shift of nights, which hits you like a steam train.

Perhaps, Westminster is now just undergoing the cultural revolution that has already overtaken our workplaces

I think this is the nub of it. It was over 20 years ago that we started never being alone with a woman in a a closed room - the rule was either 3 of you or the door fully open. We'd only just stopped having ashtrays on our desks but were still regularly doing a couple of pints each lunchtime.

Then of course came glass-walled meeting rooms and open plan offices, the woman from the new HR department became an ex officio member of every interview panel and there were a couple of high profile sackings for inappropriate behaviour pour encourager les autres.

By the time the zero alcohol policy was rolled out the lunchtime pub sesh was largely dead anyway - it was no fun without the girls. Then the Christmas party became a late afternoon high tea with ethnic snacks and no-one daring to take a drink fromn either the red wine box or the white wine box.

So yes, it's high time those self-righteous bastards in Westminster get a taste of what the rest of us have been through. Close ALL the Parliament bars - no alcohol in the workplace. Convert the secret cubbyholes into large airy open plan offices with hot desking and each MP having a little pedestal to keep their stuff in. Close the heavily subsidised restaurants and give Harvester the canteen concession. Make them account for their time.

The dreary cnuts have turned the rest of the land into a tedious mediocre middle management Hell - it's about time they got theirs.

Ever been in a place where a charismatic woman arrives and people (including females) are fawning around her ?

Not since school, I work for the council, it's supposed to be 75% women in local government, but generally speaking they don't have much charisma, wiley or sexuality.

There's nearly always an 'in crowd' everywhere though. There was at school, probably several at uni, every call centre had one, and there's one at every dance class I've been to. But I'm not sure the council has one.

They say men are competitive and women cooperative at work. But I reckon women are the competitive ones socially, and men more cooperative and easy going. I noticed this when got roped into doing a cabaret thing in a dancing competition two years running. The guys were all very supportive of each other and helped each other out.

The girls were nice to each other faces but behind the facade there were covert ops going on to 'outdo' each other in terms of who was wearing what and standing where on stage. I'd have never noticed it going on had my dance partner not also been my other half.

At first I thought it was all going on in her head. But she came into the first dress rehearsal brandishing a tiny pair of hot pants she'd disobediently bought to spite the bossy one, another of the women immediately came over to congratulate her for wiping the smile off the bossy one's face. They are actually all on the same bonkers wavelength.

I've come to the conclusion women are basically at a permanent state of war with one another.